Did you even watch 24? Here, let me fix that for you.

Terrorist: Fred, Rewire the CI-Plot Device to blow up the eastern sea board or I'll tell Suzie you cheated on her! ...6 min later...

Fred: Jack! the terrorist just escaped via submarine helicopter!

Jack: Dammit Chloe, patch me through to the Deap Sea satellite imaging array! Dammit... DAMMIT!!!!

Did you watch the video from Apple, you don't need to do that anymore. Just highlight the parts you care about and read them all from the same highlights page. Hell, it'll even take the stuff you've highlighted and make flash cards to help you remember it.

I wish I had something like this in school, would have saved me a fortune in sticky notes for bookmarking all the pages I had to re-read, or refer to, because now kids will be able to get all that on the same page with a swipe of the finger.

The University / College library usually won't let you into them unless your a paying student and if they do let you in they definitely won't let you take anything out since paying students need those books. Which gets back to the basic problem, I'm not paying 200 bucks because I'm curious about something but I will pay 15.

That's fine if you just want to learn University Physics on your own, but in college the professor will usually assign homework from problems in the book, which a comparable book won't have.

While that is true I think you're missing the point of my argument. If I'm learning for the sake of learning I don't care whether the professor assigns an assignment out of one book or another. I, as a non-student, have an interest in a subject and I am now able to buy an equivalent High School, College, or University Textbook to learn from for 15 bucks. I don't have to spend hundreds of dollars, I can now spend fifteen, and if I decide I like it enough to attain formal education in the subject, I might even be able to take a placement exam that would give me credit for the self taught material I've already covered.

Also, for K-12, although the thought of being able to buy books for $15 sounds great I think the start-up/maint costs will be too much. Hardware will increase every year, and hardware requirements for software will increase to match that.

Its cheaper than you think, if you think it through. Think of the average Grade 9 student: Math, General Science, Chemistry, English, General Computing, General History, Geography.

They'll need text books for all those classes, sometimes more than one if multiple topics are covered during the year. Lets assume they only need one for each for a minimum of seven textbooks and estimate a hundred bucks a pop, now they're going to need to buy textbooks for each year that student is there. Lets assume the same number of textbooks each year for the student's four year run: 7 x 100 = 700 x 4 = $2,800.00 per student per four year period.

Most schools replace their textbooks every four - five years, so basically once a student graduates they replace their entire textbook roster for all classes all at once.

Or they can spend $599.00 on a 32 GB iPad, lets get the mid line model in case the textbook authors decide to go a bit crazy with the video, and give the student 28 redemption codes for their textbooks over the four years which tacks on an additional $420.00. All told the district would spend $1,019.00 per student per four year period. And we haven't even covered off on any education discounts Apple would include in selling them an iPad, which there probably would be since Apple usually does provide the hardware at education discounts.

With proper care the iPad would certainly last for four years and as an incentive to treat it well, and solve the updated hardware problem, we could let the student keep it when they graduate; what an incentive to the student, do well in school and keep your iPad for College / University. Sure it would cost a fair bit to get the program started but once its running the cost in new hardware would be limited to the freshman class size each year and you wouldn't have to worry about disposing of obsolete hardware since the student's would be taking it with them.

As for insurance premiums use some of the savings for Apple Care, that should cover most stuff, and then set aside a bit more for breakage. Most schools already do something similar with their paper textbooks anyway by purchasing a number of extra copies allowing them to replace excessively damaged ones as needed.

In relation to IT costs, its an iPad and not a general purpose computer. It therefore wouldn't need the same level of IT support as a general computer would, a bunch of Wi-Fi nodes and a copy of iCloud set up for the school to coordinate textbook and lesson plan distribution should cover that. Hell that sounds like it'd be fun to set something like that up, I wonder what it takes to become an Apple Certified Technician.

Of course, one thing you miss is that in the 1970s, most households had a single wage.

I didn't miss that, in fact I compared that directly on purpose because that was the whole point of the argument. A single wage earner in 1970 was more than capable of buying a home and supporting their family.

in theory a dual wage household will be better off as with an average comibined wage of 70,000 the house costs 3.3 times what a person made.

Take a look at what you wrote. Has it sunk in yet? TWO people are now needed to do the same job as ONE only 40 years ago.

While the average price of housing has risen 900+% over that period the average wage has only gone up 50%. We, as a society, have almost the same amount of money to spend but now have to pay a far higher cost in order to attain even the most basic of necessities. Wages aren't keeping up to match the global realities, in order for a single income family to exist the average wage needs to be increased to at least 58K+.

And its not just housing, its food too. Back in the 70's you could walk into the Grocery Store with a hundred bucks and walk out with enough food to feed a family of four for 4 - 6 weeks! Now, you're lucky if a hundred bucks gets you enough food for a week, and that's assuming you eat cheap processed crap because fresh stuff will set you back even more.

Everything is more expensive, not just luxuries, but the money we collectively earn hasn't kept pace with that reality.

That's the problem here. People shouldn't have to work two jobs, or have their kids raised by Day Care so both parents can work, or go into such crushing amounts of debt, just so they can afford basic necessities. Necessities are supposed to be cheap and luxuries are supposed to be for those who can afford a bit more, but now housing is priced like a luxury and due to unending corporate / shareholder greed the wages haven't been keeping pace.

So until the University recommends those e-books, which they won't, it don't mean squat.

It doesn't matter if the University recommends them or not because prior to this announcement if I wanted to learn University Level Physics I had to spend $250 bucks on the textbook, now I can buy a comparable textbook from iBooks for $15.00 and receive information updates for the life of that edition.

Whether its a big deal in schools or not, though I really have a feeling this will be huge in the K-12 market, my desire to learn something isn't tied to expensive textbooks anymore. This is a good thing.

If only we had $243 million (about what megaupload made)

And the ironically sad part of this whole mess is that if MegaUpload had taken 20% - 25% of that and remitted it to the campaign funds of the Representatives in both the House and Senate, it probably wouldn't be in the mess its in right now.

If history has taught us anything, you don't need much money to sway a politician to your side. As long as you pay them gobs of money first, they're more than happy to let you go right on breaking the law. Hell, sometimes, if you give them enough, they'll even give you a tax break while you're doing it!

yet people act like lower house prices are a bad thing.

Exactly my point, low housing costs are NOT a bad thing. Low costs on things we absolutely need to survive are never a bad thing.

When I'm talking about helping people out with housing costs I'm not even talking about some luxury houses or condos, I'm talking a nice modest place that people will take pride in and work hard to keep nice. Because lets face facts, its really sad that something a person absolutely needs to survive is priced right out of the ability for all but the most wealthy of us to get without going through incredible, and ultimately unnecessary, hardship.

but there's an easy remedy for that: Stop paying, let the bank bank forclose and eat your losses, take your credit hit, and move on.

Or an ever better remedy would have been for Obama to let the property values tank. He could have then expropriated the land at the lower value and given the houses back to their owners, while adding its value to their tax bill, and then letting them pay it back over 25 years. In effect he could have let all those people transfer the mortgages from the bank to the public and because, unlike the banks who will use all kinds of creative lobbyist accounting to avoid having to pay the government back the Trillion dollars they were loaned, the homeowners would go to jail if they defaulted on their taxes. We would have been virtually guaranteed to get the money back while helping people out at the same time.

Instead he took the Trillion or so dollars that it probably would have cost and gave it to the thieves and liars who caused the problem in the first place. Then those same thieves and liars turfed the people they duped into the loans in the first place out of their homes, then refused to let them buy them back during the liquidation process. So not only did they steal from the economy, they also stole from the homeowners, and then they stole from the government tax rolls. All kinds of theft there, thefts that were they committed by me would place me in a 4x6 cement room for a few years but when done by the wealthy elites is totally okay and totally not theft.

I can defend my position just fine thanks but once a person starts equating any possible solution with theft while blatantly ignoring the types of theft that helped cause the problem in the first place, well, there's just no point in talking anymore.

Now we're basically trolling each other because we're bored, or at least I am. I have no clue what Kohath has in this.

Yet your words, or lack thereof, certainly implies you do.

For a great example of theft take a look at this and then please tell me oh great and wise Kohath, who seemingly has all the answers and proclaims that you "don't want anything stolen from anyone", how this isn't stealing?

Funny how people that want to steal can always find some justification or rationalization for it.

Funny, I was thinking the same thing about you.

I'm one of those "stealing is wrong" types.

Funny how its only stealing when trying to solve social inequality for the average person.

Funny how that totally goes out the window when talking about tax breaks for the rich, or for Companies who offshore everything (try finding anything that doesn't say Made in Someplace Other Than America on it), or when letting Corporations report earnings out of country for goods sold in country to avoid paying taxes, or any other number of instances of Corporate Welfare which steal money out of the economy and society as a whole.

Because in that fantasy world where Corporations always have our best interests at heart its totally okay when rich people steal! You got yours, the system works as advertized, everyone else can go fuck themselves!

Got it, you're one of those "I got mine, sucks to be you, now go fuck off!" types. No sense trying to have a reasonable conversation anymore.

Looks like your reading comprehension has failed you, here let me try again in the far easier to read list format:

* Increase average wages to better keep pace with the inflation of housing costs.
* Set a maximum prices for homes to bring them down into the realm of attainability regardless of income level.
* Require builders to set aside 20-40% of the homes / units in a condo for low income earners.
* Encourage renters to base rents on a proportion of the applicants income and provide tax incentives to make up the difference in unit cost.
* Spend the money spent on invading a country for their oil and give everyone a modest 3 bedroom home or condo.

Can we do all those. Damn right we can. Will the people in power do it, no way in hell. It would require them to have less, since they make the rules they will never vote to willingly give themselves less. It really does boil down to "I got mine, sucks to be you, now go fuck off!"

As for your "Can we" list, I agree with a lot of that. Classic Unions are great, 5 day - 40 hour work weeks, 2 day weekends, vacation time, minimum wages, work-place safety standards... None of those things would exist without the Classic Unions taking a stand for them, I like them and I think they're important. The problem is with Modern Unions. When was the last time you heard on TV about unsafe working conditions, or shifts that were too long, or vacations that weren't being granted?

You don't, or at least very seldom do. Its always three things, Wages, Job Security, and Benefits. We want more money, we never want to be fired, and we want all our health care needs covered by the company in perpetuity. What. The. Fuck? I agree with you. Its stuff like that, the ever rising cost of wages, that has priced lifes necessities out of the reach of the common low wage person. When a significant portion of the country can pay a specific amount it makes financial sense to price things to those people's wages. Its why houses cost so much, its why food costs so much, cars, pretty much everything.

Although you are being just a bit dishonest with your list. So let me clean it up:

Can we build a better factory? Unions say: "No we can't, not at the wages you're willing to pay us."
Can we get cheaper energy? Environmentalists say: "No we can't, it costs money to clean up the mess after you've made building and maintaining it. Those costs have to be factored in."
Can we cut the cost of our insurance? Lawyers say: "No we can't, shareholders won't like that 'cause it'll cut into profits."
Can we educate our children? The teachers union says: "No we can't, not for the wages you're willing to pay us.."
Can we cut local taxes? Citizens say: "I want you to, but you better not cut Service X!"
Can we cut crime in the neighborhoods? Community organizers say: "Don't fall for the lie, crime rates are steadily dropping."
Can we improve anything? Slashdot says: "No we can't, not with a system so corrupt and no political will to change it."

A house is a somewhat high value item. If you only have low value skills to offer, you probably can't afford to buy a house.

And yet 40 years ago people who were making low skilled wages could afford to buy a house, something that's quite impossible now. Where do you think these low skilled people are going to live? Got any ideas?

Now we could start talking about increasing the average wages to better keep pace with the inflation of housing costs, or forcing maximum prices on homes to bring them down into the realm of attainability, or requiring builders to set aside 20-40% of the homes / units in a condo for low income earners, or forcing renters to base it in proportion to income and provide tax incentives on the difference for them to do it. Hell, with the cost of invading a country for their oil we could have bought everyone in the country a modest 3 bedroom home or condo! But don't you dare suggest any of those things, loads of people would start complaining about a welfare state, or that you're attacking success, or any other conservative nonsense that amounts to the abdication of shared social responsibility, basically boiling down to "I got mine, sucks to be you, now go fuck off!"

So you're saying a low skilled person should go back in time 40 years? This keeps getting brought up, as if living in the past were some sort of solution. The past is gone.

Certainly the past is gone, but it would be foolish to ignore the lessons history has gives us.

Or don't you think there is something wrong with a society that has allowed homes, something everyone needs to survive, to jump in value by 944% but yet only increased the average wage by 152%? People keep bringing this up not because we all want to hop into our DeLoreans and go back to the simpler times in 1970, we point it out because its important to illustrate disparity between what we earn and what it costs us to buy the stuff we need to live! The fact that wages didn't keep pace with the rising costs of inflation in relation to housing should be of tremendous concern to everyone, low skilled jobs and wages make up the bulk of an economy but are unsustainable when a person is unable to make enough to support themselves and their families.

In 1970 a low skilled wage earner could buy a decent home and have a good life, even in the city, now they make about 50% more but have to live in a crime ridden slum. Think about that. Got any ideas on how we can fix it?

They involve eliminating artificial costs in the US - money that goes to lawyers, union bosses, government red tape, regulations, other government services, etc.

Never going to happen as the people in charge will never allow it, they make far too much money from the status quo. Hell, the US is a country where rich bankers can cause a worldwide global economic collapse and still get a Trillion dollar bail out package for their "troubles". Right now some rich Wall Streeter, who should be rotting in a jail cell for what he / she pulled, earned a big fat bonus and a pat on the head for screwing everyone out of their money and were basically told to just keep doing what they were doing.

Meanwhile some guy with low wage skills, who could have bought a nice place for his family 40 years ago, has to live in an impoverished crime ridden neighborhood because its all he can afford. We more than have the money as a society to fix this, as you said there is a lot of unnecessary government spending, but anyone who even comes close to suggesting fixes for this disparity will get immediately labelled a communist, socialist, and "out to Destroy America!".